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Monday, June 16, 2008

House archaeology

I started work on another room in the house today. I am working my way back toward the more private areas of the new house. This is the first room you encounter walking down the hall from the livingroom. It is, technically, a bedroom, but it will be our office.

As you can see, it is pink and the ubiquitous blue. The carpet is pink. Despite the powder roomish decor, it is really quite a nice room. There are those built-in shelves on the righthand wall. The small window, above, looks out to the backyard. If you turn around 180 degrees, there is a double glass door (open in the photo) that looks into the hallway where there is a window that looks out on the front garden.

I can really picture working in this very pleasant room, but I do not like the color scheme and I especially do not like the wallpaper.

Only once in my life, as a teenager, have I lived in a brand new house. In our married life we have always lived in old houses and I love the idea of old houses. I love the idea that generations have left their mark on a house. In our current house I have preserved small places, inside closets and inside cupboards, where there is old—very old, in fact—wallpaper or linoleum.

At some level I felt a kind of regret, today, as I removed the wallpaper in that room. I think someone thought this was a very pretty room. I have hung enough wallpaper, myself, to know the satisfaction of it. I have said that wallpaper equals instant gratification. When I removed the pink wallpaper I found a wall that had been painted an unthinkably drab battleship gray. I imagined some woman's delight that she had banished that drabness and replaced it with a delicate pink and such a feminine floral border. The chair rail was probably new at the same time and represented a thoughtful change. Someone put some thought and care into decorating this room. There were fancy curtains hanging on that fancy rod. I took them all down, too. I may leave the pink wallpaper inside the closet in her honor.

I wiped out most of that prettification in one afternoon's work. There is still a small panel of pink wallpaper there in the corner where all that internet equipment (now dead as a doornail) is still attached to the wall. If there are ghosts in the house, they probably aren't so happy tonight.

I really love your reflections on your new home and your residences of the past. I have never lived in a new home, and until recently I've done all of the painting and wall papering in every home we've known...and I've always left a little remnant of a previous inhabitant/decorator. You have put into words the feelings I've had, and I just love sharing them with you!

How I love rooms that offer a vista through the window, rather than another house or a parked car. Would love to work in this room, although I work in one that has equally lovely vistas.Janet in warm and sunny coastal Nova Scotia